“TALES OF GHOSTS”
about Love and Death from the Land of Mists
a collection of short stories
in the “Playing Another Reality” series
"LOVE ME NOW!"
6. A WISH
We arrived at the river on Saturday morning. It was terribly stuffy, +34C, judging by the news. I could hardly stand the heat, thank God, we had air conditioning in the car.
“Life flows as fast as this river,” Nikolas said sadly, hugging me. “What else would you like to do in your life, Pauline?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, thinking, and he gently stroked me with a plucked blade of grass.
“To get to Paris with you!” I finally decided.
“It’s a must! But not today…”
“Okay, tomorrow!” I laughed.
We both had a lot to do with the ‘city of lovers’, but we had never been to Paris together, only separately and at different times.
“Maybe… Do you know what grandiose plans we have for today? Now we’ll swim, have lunch, then we’ll go for a walk in Kuskovo. ‘Giselle’ is waiting for us in the theater tonight, and then…”
I understood that the cultural program was caused by our Monday’s quarrel. Nikolas wanted to make amends. I had already told him about Kuskovo not once, and he took his employees for ‘Giselle’ to celebrate their company anniversary.
“So what then?” I wondered.
“And what do you want then?”
…Having visited the Kuskovo palace and the exhibition in the Orangerie, we listened to some fragment of a charity concert, and on the way to the Grotto, we stopped at the Italian house-museum.
“Drop in, you won’t regret it!” the hospitable hostess called us. “The house is small but very cozy! I’ll tell you the riddle of the Count Sheremetev. If you guess it…”
We had to find three caterpillars hiding in the leaves on a small metal tree. I saw two of them at once, but the search for the third was hard. Finally, I found it too.
“Now make a wish! I assure you, whatever it is, it will definitely come true!” the woman promised, smiling.
“Then… we’ll be in Paris tomorrow,” I said in a serious voice and… laughed.
We reached the theater and found our seats, the 13th and 14th in the 6th row. Such a dangerous combination of ‘6’ and ‘13’ didn’t bother me at all. That day seemed to be one of the happiest in my life!
Finally, we came to the old and long-empty flat where Nikolas’ parents had once lived. We were greeted by an unbearable stuffiness, but Nikolas said it was better not to open the windows for ‘conspiracy’. What if the neighbors got frightened, imagining that someone had entered inside through the window, and would call the police…
“I’m so sleepy!” I said, yawning sweetly at the thought that it was the first time Nikolas let me stay with him until the morning, instead of sending me home at midnight, and we would finally wake up in the same bed as husband and wife.
“Let’s at least have some tea, honey! I’ve bought your favorite cakes not for nothing! There’s no electric kettle, though, so we’ll have to wait a while…”
I nodded wearily, closing my eyes. Nikolas went into the kitchen, and I followed him half-asleep. He stopped by the stove.
“Shit, it’s gas here, and I forgot where the matches are…”
“I have an electric stove at home, too,” I mumbled, falling asleep on the go.
“Where are the matches, where are the matches…” Nikolas wondered, humming softly.
“To hell with tea! Let’s go to bed,” I whispered and hugged him, hanging on his neck helplessly.
…I woke up, looked at the clock on the bedside table, and got horrified! No way I could have slept that long! I quickly moved to the kitchen and found Nikolas standing at the window.
“Look, I’m sorry!” I exclaimed. “Why didn’t you wake me up? You said you had an early morning pick-up at…”
“How did you sleep?” Nikolas suddenly interrupted me halfway through.
“At a new place, you mean?” I wondered, remembering the stupid saying about dreaming grooms in places where girls fall asleep for the first time.
“Yeah,” he looked away, sighing. “Did you dream about anything?”
“Something heavy… I was suffocating, flying in the void through a black tunnel… Why?”
“And there was a roar and rattle in your ears,” Nikolas added sadly.
“Yes, it seems so. How do you know? Did I scream in my sleep?”
“What do you feel now?” he asked, still standing by the window.
“I’m okay! No, not even that! I’m the happiest woman in the world! To hell with Paris!” I smiled, came up to Nikolas and pressed my cheek to his cheek.
“Forgive me, Pauline,” he whispered in my ear.
“What for?!” I was surprised.
“I’ve never said I love you. I love you.”
“Something must have really happened if he said that to me!” it flashed through my head.
“No one will believe it but you,” Nikolas sighed somehow doomed, “although it doesn’t matter much now…”
“What’s happened?”
“I was always afraid of your dramatically leaving the Earth beforehand. And yesterday…”
“I love you too,” I tried to reassure Nikolas, thinking hard about what he was getting at. “I’ll put the kettle on!”
Nikolas tried to stop me with a gesture, I stopped only for a moment, asking myself ‘where are the matches?’, and then I came up to the stove when suddenly noticed that the burner was ALREADY on, but there was NO fire…
“Oh no!” I screamed at the thought that pierced me. “NO! NO! Not now, when everything is so good! Tell me it’s not true!!!”
“Yes, baby, yes,” he whispered, heartbroken. “Please forgive me, you know I didn’t do it on purpose…”
I instantly found myself at the door to the bedroom, but Nikolas blocked my way.
“No, Pauline, don’t go in there! It’s horrible…”
I slowly sank to the floor, Nikolas put his arms around me.
“It’s all over now,” he said trying to console me somehow. “Everything will be fine. You’ll calm down now, and we’ll go to Paris. We’ve never been there together before…”
July 2002